Conceal the hurt we feel inside

2004-05-19 - 6:15 p.m.

Sometimes I'm so dumb it hurts. Yesterday morning I was feeling confident in my ability to someday pass this test, but then I went back and tried answering some more questions and I was horrible still. I tend to get about 68% of the questions right. It's horrible. I'm so stupid. What a fluke it was that I managed to pass the Cali board! Ugh. You know, I'm thinking that I'd probably be an excellent hamburger flipper.

Last night I was trying to study but I was so angry with my stupidity that I kept tearing up. One disadvantage of being here at Tigger's place is not having anywhere I can go to cry off my frustration. I just have to hold it in and hope it dissipates without any major effects. Do you remember that movie "A League of Their Own" about the women's professional baseball league during World War II? There's this one part where one of the female players starts to cry and Tom Hanks, the manager, totally disgusted yells, "There's no crying in baseball!" I'm always using that line on myself these days. "There's no crying in pharmacy!!"

But my frustration with the whole thing discourages me from studying more. Being here it's harder to do anything but study. Tigger is off teaching right now so I'm here alone with her land lady who is really, really nice. The only thing there is for me to do besides study, really, is eat. I ate a whole bag of Chex Mix this afternoon. Ay, Euc, what are you doing? Well, actually I was studying when I ate that. I just started munching away and next thing I knew the bag was practically empty so I just finished it off. In the afternoon I went out for a walk. First stop on the walk was for bubble tea. The section of town where Tigger lives is essentially a Chinatown. It's very Asian, anyway, although I guess a lot of it is actually Vietnamese. There's a bubble tea shop in every other store, it seems. Imagine that! When will my home town get on the bubble tea bandwagon? Anyway, my first bubble tea today was a passion fruit slush with boba. It was very good. Then I walked for about an hour as I took the very long route to the Asian market. There I discovered that if you're looking for cottage cheese, the Asian market is not the place to go. I bought stuff for dinner tomorrow and then some of Tigger's current favorite dessert, red bean mochi icecream. On the way back to her place I stopped by a Vietnamese baguette shop and got a sandwich for dinner plus another bubble tea, this one Thai tea flavored. I'm such an oinker.

Oh, as for my plan to take the test next Tuesday, that's officially off. Other than feeling really dumb again, I also found out that Tigger is actually working on Tuesday when I thought she was going to be off. So I guess I'll take it when I get back home.

My brother is back from Japan now and my mom tells me he's planning on coming to Disneyland with us on Memorial Day weekend. Yay! It'll be just like the old days--the four of us together.

Tigger writes really beautiful music. She's one of those people who can just sit down at the piano and make music come out of it. Perhaps that's not so uncommon, but it's certainly not something I can do. She's written several songs recently that I really love. I could sit and listen to them all day. I would love to have a recording of them for when she's not here to oblige me. I'd love to just have a recording of her messing on the piano for an hour or so.

OK, ok, no more procrastinating. Back to studying!